On-chain data shows the Ethereum sharks and whales have continued to sell for four months now, a sign that the asset may not recover soon.

Ethereum May Not Be In The Best Situation Right Now

In a new insight post, the on-chain analytics firm Santiment has looked into how the various metrics related to Ethereum look like at the moment to get hints about the asset’s future outcome.

First, the analytics firm has discussed the asset’s “transaction volume,” that is the daily total number of tokens that are being transferred on the network.

Here is a chart that shows the trend in this indicator:

The value of the metric seems to have been low in recent days | Source: Santiment

As is visible in the graph, the Ethereum transaction volume has gone down recently and has hit some low levels, suggesting that the network isn’t observing much usage currently.

“Though not necessarily a red flag for any asset, this is indicative of the crowd simply showing disinterest during a time when many traders really can’t decide whether the $1,650 price level is overvalued or undervalued,” explains Santiment.

The firm further notes that the $1,500 level has had quite a bit of psychological support around it, so if the cryptocurrency declines toward this level, the volume might bounce back.

While the volume can provide hints about the interest among the general investors, it may not necessarily reflect the sentiment of the largest of holders. So, the second indicator Santiment checked is the total amount of holdings belonging to investors carrying between 10 and 10,000 ETH in their wallets.

Looks like the value of the indicator has been heading downhill since a while now | Source: Santiment

The investors with address balances in this range are the sharks and whales, entities that can carry some influence because of their large holdings. From the chart, it’s apparent that these cohorts as a whole have been continuously selling since around four months ago when ETH hit its top above $2,100.

Prior to this, these large investors had been accumulating, but it would appear that these investors gave in to the allure of profit-taking once ETH rose to high enough levels. The selloff has slowed down a bit recently, but these holders are still continuing to shed a net portion of their holdings.

“This continued tailslide in supply held by sharks and whales is something we need to monitor,” says the analytics firm. “Prices can still rise as they take profit, and their holdings are far from a perfect correlation. But in terms of a signal for an immediate return to $2K and above, it certainly isn’t being perpetuated by whales.”

Finally, Santiment has looked into the “development activity” of the asset, to see how much work the developers have been putting into the project’s public GitHub repository.

The trend in the development activity | Source: Santiment

Generally, this metric can be one of the things to look out for to see if a project has long-term potential or not. As the Ethereum developers haven’t stopped working hard recently, it’s safe to assume that they are still committed to the asset. So, at least this is one of the indicators not bleak for ETH right now.

ETH Price

Ethereum has been unable to break out of sideways movement recently as its price continues to trade around the $1,600 level.

ETH has continued to be flat in the past few days | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Sebastian Pena Lambarri on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Santiment.net